Speaking of my cultural illiteracy, I'm embarrassed to admit that until last night I had never heard of the Hygienic Dress League.

However, I had my camera handy, and I took a picture:

As it turns out, the "League" is all in the minds of the sign painters, who happen to be engaged in guerilla art:

The culprits responsible are Detroit artists Dorota Bilica and Steve Coy, who created the "League" back at the University of Hawaii as a way to have fun mocking ad images -- and more recently, to perk up desolate Detroit buildings.

"We were passionate about doing something positive for the city of Detroit," says Bilica. "This brought that building alive."

The project cost Coy and Bilica -- who plan more public art, including nighttime projects this summer -- $400 in materials and four days of painting, much of it atop a 30-foot extension ladder. (That entry arch turns out to be tall.)

So far, nobody's defaced it, though the artists say they were aware at the outset that such a project, like almost any guerrilla art, could be short-lived.

Here's the top of a nearby skyscraper which (fortunately) looks as if it may still be in use:

Detroit is loaded with incredibly cool buildings in a poor state of repair. Where the money will come from to repair them, who knows? To call the city economically depressed is understatement, and modern building codes often require things like environmentally friendly double pane windows. And asbestos removal. (Another pet peeve, because the danger of asbestos -- especially chrysotile asbestos -- is highly exaggerated by the asbestos trial lawyer industry.) Ironically, because expensive asbestos removal is required in order to demolish a building, the asbestos might be prolonging the life of these beauties.

So perhaps asbestos can be seen as being an unwitting best friend of the preservationists -- a hygienic form of dress for older buildings. Why not? Is there some rule that destruction must always be the handmaiden of progress? Couldn't the modern forces of Henry VIII have destroyed "Papism" without knocking down almost every last Norman monastery in England?

There I go, getting distracted to the point that I almost lost track of this post, which was not so much the Hygienic Dress League, my cultural illiteracy, or even old buildings. These were merely sights I saw along the road to last night's main event, which was a baseball game: the Detroit Tigers versus the Chicago Cubs.

I rooted for the Tigers, because I live here, and if for no other reason supporting the local team is a "when in Rome" kind of thing.

Here's Tiger hunger at the gates:

A few pictures of the game.

It was tough to catch the ball in action, but in this photo I caught the ball being bunted by a Cub:

And a missed bunt by a Tiger:

Here are two taken right after the ball was hit:

I noticed that although I was lucky enough to catch the action, the camera seems to distort the "narrative" (if you will) -- for the participants have not yet had time to react to what they just did.

Towards the climax of the game, a nearby fireworks show provided a fairly sizable distraction, with lots of noise, and sights like this:

The Tigers won 5-3, and people exited as the fireworks did its thing with the grand finale. I took this while walking down the exit ramp:

A surge, not a siege.

MORE: I almost forgot about an important cultural icon which graces the road to Detroit:

It's the giant Uniroyal Tire, originally made for the 1964 World's Fair, and kept in a good state of repair ever since:

The Uniroyal® Giant Tire was originally created as a Ferris wheel attraction at the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair. The wheel held 96 fairgoers and was powered by a 100-horsepower motor. More than two million people rode the Giant Tire Ferris wheel during the fair, including Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, John Jr. and Caroline.

After the 1965 World's Fair festivities ended, the Giant Tire was relocated to a Uniroyal sales office in Allen Park, Michigan, and has towered alongside I-94 near the Metro Airport ever since. Over the decades it has become an important symbol of Uniroyal's 111-year heritage and a cultural icon for the city of Detroit known the world over.